ELMWOOD PARK Elmwood Park hadn’t registered a victory in almost a month, but the Tigers got a win when they needed it the most, in the first round of the Class 3A playoffs.
Facing the end of the season, Elmwood Park’s defense dominated Clemente Monday in the first half and the offense finished off the Wildcats in the third quarter en route to a 55-17 victory in the Elmwood Park Regional quarterfinals.
“It’s always nice to get a win in regionals so you have that successful story before you really get into the guts of the playoffs,” Tigers head coach Kellye Stefanski said.
Despite an 11-game losing streak during the season and going without a victory since Jan. 22, when the Tigers beat Walther Christian 33-26, they remained confident about winning in the playoffs.
“It’s been tough but it’s not as bad because we know we always try our hardest and we’ve lost close games and games in overtime,” sophomore Analise Hernandez said. “It feels nice to finally have a win.”
“It’s not fun losing every game but that doesn’t discourage us,” senior Nikki Mescolotto said. “We still go into every game trying our hardest to get that win. We haven’t been in many blowout games so we know going into every game that we have a chance. We just haven’t finished. It felt pretty good to win.”
The Tigers were scheduled to face Johnsburg in the regional semifinals at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Neither team was happy about how it played in the first quarter. Elmwood Park (5-22) shut out Clemente, but Stefanski wasn’t thrilled about just a 7-0 lead after shooting 3-for-12.
“We’ve been struggling to score all year,” Stefanski said. “We’ve had halves where we score five points and quarters where we score two points. They’re lights-out in practice but when they get into a game they get two points in a quarter and it’s just hard to understand.”
The Tigers’ offense started to click in the second quarter, hitting 5 of 10 to take a 21-9 lead into halftime.
“We came out kind of slow,” said senior Ariana Kelley, who led all scorers with 15 points. “They ran a very slow offense and in turn we ran a very slow offense. After halftime we pressed and it wasn’t to kill them by more, it was to get our energy up and get us moving more instead of sitting back in our defense.”
The Tigers had their best quarter of the season, scoring 22 points while shooting 10-for-17 to lead 43-13.
“That doesn’t happen very often for us,” Kelley said. “I feel like because our energy was up it was easier to take good shots. We passed it in and passed it out and did everything we were supposed to do.”
Elmwood Park had three players score in double figures. Hernandez had 12 points and Mescolotto had 10. Seniors Emily Long and Karli Noone contributed six points apiece.
“Everyone was involved instead of a couple people feeling it was up to them,” Hernandez said. “It was because of that teamwork that we were able to win.”
Rob Valentin is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press
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